Walking Activity Insights
Introduction
Walking is a meaningful part of my daily life. I spent four weeks for collecting data on this.
How long do you spend on a walking activities?
What motivates you to do walking activities?
What is the person in front of you doing when you take a walk?
How many people were in the group in front of me?
Were there any pet(s) in the group?
Whenever I took a walk, I recorded walking duration, motivation, walking activity, group size, and pet. I created a few plots from the collected data and visualised it.
Walking Time
I have collected data for almost 4 weeks, and the first plot I created is the one showing walking time vs. the number of observations in a column plot. I enjoy walking, so I walk almost every day, and through Stat 220, I was able to track how long and how often I walk. Looking at the plot, you can see that I mostly walk for about 15 - 30 minutes. You can also notice that I rarely walk for less than 15 minutes. The second most common walking duration was 30-60 minutes, and the next was walking for more than an hour.
Walking Activity and Pet
The second plot is shown as a bar plot. I created this plot to compare which walking activities people engage in while walking with their pets. From the plot, you can see that there were no people walking with their pets while riding electric scooters or skateboarding. However, when walking or running, many people did walk with their pets. Interestingly, walking was the only activity where the proportion of people walking with pets was higher than those walking without pets. There was only one instance of someone accompanied by their pet while cycling. This plot shows that when people are riding something, they don’t walk with their pets, but when they are walking or running, a large number of people walk with their pets.
Walking Duration and Motivation
The third plot is presented as a jitter plot. I created this to explore the relationship between walking duration and motivation. From the plot, it’s clear that walking for physical health is the most common reason. Although the data appears fairly spread out, it shows that mental health reasons tend to walk for 15–30 minutes. Since walking for mental health is the least frequent motivation, I guess things were going pretty smoothly during the data collection period! For enjoying nature, the walking duration tends to be longer compared to other motivations.
Motivation by Day of the Week
The fourth plot is shown as a count plot. I created it to explore the motivation for walking on different days of the week. Overall, walking for physical health was the most common motivation throughout the week. Since I sometimes go on walks with friends when I’m at uni, socialising with others was more common on weekdays than weekends. Also, most walks motivated by enjoying nature took place on the weekends. I think this plot clearly reflects my habit of going on walks by the bay and escaping from the city on weekends.
Conclusion
Through these plots, I discovered:
I mostly talk a walk for 15 - 30 minutes at once.
I walk for physical health more than any other reason.
People bring their pet along when walking or running, not when riding electric scooters or skateboarding.
My motivation of walking on weekdays are mostly for socialising with others, while weekends are for enjoying nature.
Collecting and analysing this data gave me a fun and insightful way to better understand my own behaviours and routines.
